Farewell (Buchheim)

Farewell is a novel by Lothar-Günther Buchheim that was published in 2000. It is the third part of the trilogy that began with Das Boot in 1973 and continued with The Fortress in 1995 .

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In 1978, the former Marine painter and war correspondent embarks Lothar-Guenther Buchheim for a trip from Rotterdam to Durban on the only German "nuclear ship" Otto Hahn one that the former commander of U-96 close and confidant Buchheim, Heinrich Lehmann-Willenbrock commanded becomes.

The book is, so to speak, the travelogue of a “sentimental journey”: During the journey, Buchheim and Willenbrock talk almost every evening about events and questions raised by the plot of The Fortress . For example, the story about the whereabouts of Buchheim's French girlfriend and later wife Simone (real name Gwen Militon), who was arrested by the SD for alleged espionage in The Fortress and whose whereabouts were not given, is clarified . The question raised in the previous books as to whether she was really involved in the Resistance remains unanswered.

In the course of the voyage, many more questions of this kind are clarified and thus the past of Buchheim and the "old man" is dealt with, but the dislike of both of them towards the "Schlendrian" on board a gloomy inventory of the present is made. The reader clearly experiences that the "good old days" of seafaring are over and these two relics from bygone days also know that they are obsolete.

Here, too, the action is framed in the explanation of marine technology: Whereas in the first two parts it was still the technology of German submarines, in Der Abschied Buchheim conveys the complex technology of the "Otto Hahn" in an easily understandable way.